The present invention relates to a device for feeding stacks of cutouts to a user machine.
In particular, the present invention relates to a device for transferring, in a fully automatic manner, stacks of cutouts to an input magazine of a user machine, constituted for example by a packaging machine.
German patent application No. 33 07 675 discloses a transfer device of the above described type comprising a loop-shaped conveyor for feeding in succession stacks of cutouts to a loading station of an L-shaped fork slideable along a fixed guide which is aligned with the direction along which the stacks advance on the conveyor and is inclined downwardly and towards an input magazine of a packaging machine.
In the above mentioned German patent the conveyor has multiple oscillating supports or pockets, each one suitable to support a stack, and is formed so that it can oscillate, at the loading station, about an axis which lies transversely to the advancement direction of the stacks along the conveyor to unload the associated stack onto the L-shaped fork.
This known device has several technical and functional drawbacks. First of all, in the above described known device it is in fact necessary to provide a conveyor which not only extends in a loop on a horizontal plane, thus occupying a relatively large space, but also has multiple oscillating supports which are intrinsically expensive and scarcely reliable.
Furthermore, more significantly, the oscillation of each support at said loading station is matched by an uncontrolled rotation of the stack as it passes from said oscillating support to the L-shaped fork, with the consequent danger of the breakup of said stack. This is due to the fact that the stack, in passing from the substantially horizontal direction of advancement along the conveyor to the inclined direction of advancement of the L-shaped fork, performs a rotation during which it moves with no control at all with respect to the L-shaped fork.